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Soup can be fine. I absolutely LOVE fielding a mixed Imperium army - feels very fluffy to have an Astra Militarum battalion advancing through the crossfire, with Space Marines dropping behind enemy lines on wings of fire to take out high value targets. However I also think it's disappointing that most factions work best when you can (in tournaments read: have to) patch their weaknesses by jimmying in other armies.

SO: How about allowing pure single faction lists to use Stratagems from their codex TWICE per phase rather than just once.

By single faction I mean single SUB faction. The lowest possible common faction keyword. So you only get to do this if you are 100% Hive Fleet Leviathan, or 100% Forge World Mars, or 100% Blood Angels.

It would mean a pretty huge power bump to many factions who are powerful but only in parts - e.g. the Blood Angels 3d6 charge can only be used on one unit per turn, so you know there's no point running a pure death company list as only one of them will be able to do it. Doubling that option per turn would, I think, make these pure armies much more focused.

Do you think this would be workable?

I feel like if you have a friend who's frustrated that their monofaction army doesn't stack up against your souperfriends list, this could be worth trying.

Apparently the original play tests had it so you only gained access to the stratagems warlord traits and relics of your most commonly shared keyword across your ARMY instead of detachment.

So if your shared Keyword was Imperium, you basically got nothing.

If it was Astartes, then you had access to the basic SM stuff.

If it's all Ultramarines then you get all the UM stuff as well.


They should go back to that. Don't get all the benefits on the detachment level. Get them on the army level.

I'm more inline with Lance (though I might opt for additional bonuses at this point instead of taking things away). The issue with the stratagem idea is that CP are still a limited resource, so while using them twice a phase can be great it can also mean you blow them all out in a single turn, and would also require a ton of balance work.

For instance I take alpha legion and infiltrate 40 Berserkers, move charge and assault 3 times with both units on turn 1. That does not really sound like much fun. Same with the shoot twice stratagems, it would be super powerful to be able to shoot 2 units twice on turn 1.

Wow imagine 2 squads of MoS oblits shooting twice in a turn. yowzers

I agree that soups should be fine, IMHO variety is a great value. But soups should be worst in terms of competitiveness than taking a single faction, period.

I don't know how to fix this, maybe adding a -5CP penalty if a list has units from two different books, or -7CP if from three, etc...

Alternatively just a flat -3CP but the possiblity of using only strategems from a single book, the one that is mostly represented in the list in terms of points. For example if you have 2/3 SM and 1/3 astra militarum you can't use AM stratagems at all, but only SM ones.

Soups would still be legal, but relegated in fluffy metas.

Allowing strategems twice per turn for pure factions may lead to abused and overpowered combos.

Yeah the Slaanesh or Ynnari stratagem to shoot twice would be super OP

I still don't understand why they didn't just re-use the Age of Sigmar rules where up to 20% of your points can be in an allied style force, otherwise you lose your special allegiance powers. They already wrote the system to control mad soups, why not use it?

Only reason I can think is that it would make Imperial Knights unplayable, as they are >25% of a 2k list on their own.

One suggestion i've seen was to change the way CPs are generated to penalise multi-detachment would necessarily penalising (or rewarding) soups.

In short it awarded a flat CP total based on the points value of the game (1 CP per 250pts for instance) and then the player had to spend those CPs to 'buy' their FoCs.

So a single faction army might only spend a couple to buy a battalion to fill out whereas multi-faction or spam armies would need to burn extra CPs to buy the additional vanguard/outrider/patrol/etc detachments.

The system would favour the varied armies first (good slot for CP return on battalions), the specialist/elite armies second (few slots needed) and the soup armies least (at least one detachment needed per faction).

TBH if you just made it so that you only got the +3 CP from being a battleforged army into only getting them if your all from one book you would get a lot more one book armies.


Penalties are a no go. Like don't even mention them. You just take away bonus's to make it less attractive. If you penalize people you just anger them.

'Soup' is the only way some armies are actually valid, though.

Try fielding an all-Deathwatch force. It can be done, but it's not easy.

Then try laying down nothing but Knights.

Custodes? Good luck.

Grey Knights on their own are still a challenge to play on their own.

Soup sells models. GW will never correct it. It would be up to the player base.

 quickfuze wrote:
Soup sells models. GW will never correct it. It would be up to the player base.

Most games I play in, you are limited to ONE allied detachment alongside your primary detachment.

There are also some 'courtesy' rules that keep people from spamming the board with some pretty absurd combos.

Just get rid of undercosted models. Then soup doesn't matter. 4 ppm guardsmen are just as broken in an IG list as they are souped into a marine list.

 quickfuze wrote:
Soup sells models. GW will never correct it. It would be up to the player base.

I don't know. If multiple armies were viable I think many players are willing to buy a 1500-2500 points force of a single faction rather than adding 500 points to their current army. With the soup you just want to buy a few more models, encouraging to start new armies should make GW sell more models.


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 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
'Soup' is the only way some armies are actually valid, though.

Try fielding an all-Deathwatch force. It can be done, but it's not easy.

Then try laying down nothing but Knights.

Custodes? Good luck.

Grey Knights on their own are still a challenge to play on their own.

Some armies, all you mentioned in fact, should never exist as independent factions, but they should be part of the same book.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
'Soup' is the only way some armies are actually valid, though.

Try fielding an all-Deathwatch force. It can be done, but it's not easy.

Then try laying down nothing but Knights.

Custodes? Good luck.

Grey Knights on their own are still a challenge to play on their own.

mono GK are so pointless after custodes arrived that they might just aswell remove the whole force, but mono knights and mono custodes works fine.
and that is i think the MAIN issue with mathhammer, people only see the turny level.

turnys are a very small part of the big 40k picture. casual and narrative drop-inn games from 500-1500p are a mutch bigger part.

i dont mind soup aslong as we wont get all codexes until the end of this year, but when we mark 1st jan 19 i`d rather see that soup is made illegal in matched play, so that the game can be played as it should be played, aka mono codex force vs mono codex force and the proplem will be solved by itself, as gw can go back to some proper codex balance work and not do soup balance work.

 Silentz wrote:
Soup can be fine. I absolutely LOVE fielding a mixed Imperium army - feels very fluffy to have an Astra Militarum battalion advancing through the crossfire, with Space Marines dropping behind enemy lines on wings of fire to take out high value targets. However I also think it's disappointing that most factions work best when you can (in tournaments read: have to) patch their weaknesses by jimmying in other armies.

SO: How about allowing pure single faction lists to use Stratagems from their codex TWICE per phase rather than just once.

By single faction I mean single SUB faction. The lowest possible common faction keyword. So you only get to do this if you are 100% Hive Fleet Leviathan, or 100% Forge World Mars, or 100% Blood Angels.

It would mean a pretty huge power bump to many factions who are powerful but only in parts - e.g. the Blood Angels 3d6 charge can only be used on one unit per turn, so you know there's no point running a pure death company list as only one of them will be able to do it. Doubling that option per turn would, I think, make these pure armies much more focused.

Do you think this would be workable?

I feel like if you have a friend who's frustrated that their monofaction army doesn't stack up against your souperfriends list, this could be worth trying.

I don't hate it, but I'd be worried you might be able to "spike" your stratagem usage in somewhat nasty ways. Imagine kill shotting predators twice a turn instead of once, for instance, or forewarning dark reapers twice in a single turn. Sure, you'll burn through command points fast, but you'll make up for it by removing larger chunks of your opponent's army in the first couple of turns. Plus, there are some mono-faction armies that generate CP pretty well. Guard and tyranids both come to mind. This change would basically be handing those guys an extra advantage without too much of a drawback.

What would everyone think of, for purposes of tournament play specifically, simply restricting armies to a single detachment with the exception that certain "mini-factions" could be included in second detachment composed entirely of minifactions and the primary faction. So you could build...
*A soup list that shared a single detachment and thus didn't get chapter tactics or faction-specific stratagems
*A "pure" list composed of a single sub-faction (like an all salamanders batallion or whatever)
* A pure list with an allied detachment composed of, for instance, all death watch OR deathwatch with salamanders.

I'd probably NOT count ynnari characters as a "mini faction." It feels appropriate to have to build an aeldari detachment if you want to play ynnari. Harlequins would probably count as a mini-faction though.

This would give some pretty severe drawbacks to players who wanted to draw their forces from five different factions, but in the context of tournament play, I'm kind of okay with that. Having weaknesses is interesting. Sometimes it's nice to not be able to fill in every gap in your army.



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Martel732 wrote:
Just get rid of undercosted models. Then soup doesn't matter. 4 ppm guardsmen are just as broken in an IG list as they are souped into a marine list.

Seems a bit fallacious to me. Providing a greater variety of options can make some armies more potent than the sum of their parts. Kabalite warriors are considerably better when they can be used as a screen for potent craftworlder gunlines, for instance, than when taken as part of a purely drukhari list. Harlequins are way more effective when backed up by decent long-ranged multi-damage shooting than when they have to rely on the modest voidweaver.

Yeah whichever det has your warlord in it should be your main faction and any det that isn't the same as that one doesn't give any CP, maybe even for each ally you have to pay 1 CP per detachment.

This way you would have to take extra detachments of your main in order to actually get any CP.

What if your like me and run a pure mono army, but over two or three detachments?

So all of those detachments are all the exact same faction, what then? Do i get penalized or do i get a bonus?

mchammadad wrote:
What if your like me and run a pure mono army, but over two or three detachments?

So all of those detachments are all the exact same faction, what then? Do i get penalized or do i get a bonus?

You are the exact person we're trying to reward.

Unless (in my humble opinion) one detachment is Hive Fleet Gorgon, the second detachment is Jormungandr and the third is Leviathan (or whatever)

That's just the same as soup really. Much worse in fact. What the heck are three hive fleets doing fighting together? Tyranid Jamboree?

But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups. And some imperium factions should be merged into a single one.

Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Cadians + Catachans shouldn't be penalised, it's like bringing coven stuff plus kabal units or bad moons plus goffs. Those are not examples of soups.

 Blackie wrote:
Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Allying AM and SM to the minor imperial factions has been a thing since forever, because the minor factions lack the tools (the preface for the 2nd ed Sororitas codex even stated outright that you would be screwed if you played at higher points without allies).

Inquisition, Assassins, Ministorum, and so on all need to be run as part of larger faction and so far attempts to expand these minor armies into full books (i.e. GK, Deathwatch, Custodes, Scions) hasn't exactly led to a well balanced force. Though going the other way GWs past efforts to combine factions (sisteres into WH, inquisition into GK, harlies into the eldar dex, BT into the marines, etc) have also gone poorly.


Now mixing guard and marines is a newer thing and gets around the marines lack of cheap bodies, static artillery, navy support ... well, cheap bodies since the marines have a ton of artillery and aircraft these days. Seems like the two types of faction - full and partial if you will - need to be distinctly defined and bound by different rules.

Guard generating CPs for captain smash while celestine is used for a distraction carnifex and a squad of wolf lords leads the charge is not a great situation.
On the other hand an inquisitor leading a sororitas strike force or bodyguard of scion makes perfect sense to be allied to a larger guard force.

 Blackie wrote:

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups.

I'm glad you're not the arbitrary arbiter of purity then.

EDIT: To add something constructive to the conversation; this implies that its okay to mix Ultramarines and Raven Guard, but not okay to mix White Scars and Blood Angels, despite having the exact same variance in keywords and fluff "souping".

 Blackie wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups. And some imperium factions should be merged into a single one.

Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Cadians + Catachans shouldn't be penalised, it's like bringing coven stuff plus kabal units or bad moons plus goffs. Those are not examples of soups.

I was responding to the post directly above mine, which was saying that different "sub-factions" should not be allowed in the same army if we're being "pure".

 LunarSol wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups.

I'm glad you're not the arbitrary arbiter of purity then.

EDIT: To add something constructive to the conversation; this implies that its okay to mix Ultramarines and Raven Guard, but not okay to mix White Scars and Blood Angels, despite having the exact same variance in keywords and fluff "souping".

I think they should be ok as well, they're all space marines, in fact IMHO imperium should have three books:

SM of all kind

AM and scions

Everything else.

Maybe AD Mech could be the 4th indepentent faction. I'd also include assassins and imperial knights as auxiliary units for all the three codexes.

You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Addendum: You could follow up by taking the "Codexes" that fall under the Imperial Soup umbrella wherein standalone use is either pointless (Assassins, Inquisition, Sisters of Silence) or crippling (Grey Knights, Deathwatch) and give them some way to stand on their own rather than punishing them for existing because you might catch out some abusive Guilliman-stacking shenanigans with the same tweaks.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Internal and external balance are also important, but that doesn't mean there aren't certain problems with soup armies. Reasonably balanced melee army is much better when it's backed up by also reasonably balanced shooty army. Gunline army is more powerful when it has access to cheap spam units from another faction. That sort of thing. It's not that people don't want to take their own units; it's that some factions have units that are just objectively better at a given role (like bubble wrapping) than the units in another faction. I often field kabalites as my bubble wrapping troop tax instead of avengers, guardians, or rangers because their lower cost basically makes them better at the job I need them to do. It's not that rangers or avengers are bad. It's just that I have a more efficient option.

So to some extent, this topic boils down to whether or not you like the idea of a faction being able to cherry pick a wider variety of units to fill in gaps and weaknesses. Personally, when we're talking about tournament play, part of me prefers the thought of armies having pronounced advantages and disadvantages. Want to field marines? Awesome, but you'll give up your stratagems if you want to take a cheap guardsman CP battery detachment. Want to play Ynnari? Cool. Then you'll be playing Ynnari instead of Alaitoc with a double-tapping squad of reapers on the side. But that is, admittedly, mostly a personal preference.

When we're talking about balance in 40k, one of the biggest issues is the sheer number of options and combinations available. Disallowing or adding a drawback to soup mitigates this somewhat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You wanna fix the soup issue?

How about you start with fixing internal balance and external balance first? Makin stupid rules like this won't fix the issue if people aren't gonna want to take their own units. I'm almost content just using the CP for rerolls and extra relics now and then.

Addendum: You could follow up by taking the "Codexes" that fall under the Imperial Soup umbrella wherein standalone use is either pointless (Assassins, Inquisition, Sisters of Silence) or crippling (Grey Knights, Deathwatch) and give them some way to stand on their own rather than punishing them for existing because you might catch out some abusive Guilliman-stacking shenanigans with the same tweaks.

I am personally of the opinion that some factions really just don't make sense as a standalone force. At least not in typical 40k game sizes. Assassins are an extreme example of this. I don't think we need to make assassins a viable standalone faction. Just make sprinkling them into a list viable while also acknowledging the impact that soup has on the game. Thus my above proposal for a system where you're limited to one "main" detachment but can potentially take a second detachment containing "mini factions."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackie wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
But then, what about a Cadian Battalion of infantry with a Catachan tank detachment? Nothing wrong with that, should that be penalised?

IMHO subfactions from the same codex are not soups. And some imperium factions should be merged into a single one.

Basically what really is annoying with soups is to ally celestine or AM units to SM lists, or AM to other imperium factions.

Cadians + Catachans shouldn't be penalised, it's like bringing coven stuff plus kabal units or bad moons plus goffs. Those are not examples of soups.

I'm not... strongly opposed to mixing sub-factions, and it's fluffier for guard than for some other factions. That said, in the context of tournament play, would it really be that bad to only get one sub-faction's worth of traits? I mean, sure, marine chapters team up often enough, but I feel it's easy to end up in a situation where every melee marine unit you see is a blood angel, every long-ranged unit you see is RG or UM, and Imperial Fists never field bikes because some other chapter tactic does it better. Similarly, my dark reapers are almost never any craftworld other than Alaitoc because they simply don't benefit much from the other craftworld traits. Again, this is personal taste. I find it more interesting to look at an army and go, "They're playing to this theme and thus have these strengths and weaknesses," than to say, "Ah. Yep. He took the best possible special rules for each of his units by breaking the army up into three detachments. Again."

Really what needs to be done is additional bonuses for the more " pure your army is. For example

Mixed detachment gets no traits, stratagems, obsec

Pure detachment gets trait A, basic stratagems, obsec

Pure army gets Trait A+, advanced stratagems, obsec

For example if we used imperial fists.

A detachment would get their current Trait, and stratagems
a full army would get current trait + bolter drill as a trait (exploding 6s for bolter weapons), as well as some additional imperial fist only stratagems.

Breng77 wrote:
Really what needs to be done is additional bonuses for the more " pure your army is. For example

Mixed detachment gets no traits, stratagems, obsec

Pure detachment gets trait A, basic stratagems, obsec

Pure army gets Trait A+, advanced stratagems, obsec

For example if we used imperial fists.

A detachment would get their current Trait, and stratagems
a full army would get current trait + bolter drill as a trait (exploding 6s for bolter weapons), as well as some additional imperial fist only stratagems.

That would certainly make it less of a given that you have to choose the sub faction for each detachment based upon its job

IT essentially makes it a trade off of advantages if done right.

You can soup within detachments for optimum min maxing and flexibility.

You can soup a collection of "pure" detachments to maximize benefits for each role and have flexibility of army choice.

You can stay totally pure to maximize advantage of traits and stratagems.

The idea is to make all army building types equally valid. Right now the only reason to stay pure is to allow your buffs to work across the most units, but often that is not really necessary as buffs only cover a small area of the table.